Adolf Hitler was a film buff. He once said of cameras “Every German family must have one. Every aspect of the nation’s growth would be captured.” And in 1936 be bought his companion Eva Von Braun a silent 8mm camera for her birthday.

When Hitler’s secret Berghof mountain retreat was inspected by the US Office of Strategic Services, they discovered reels upon reels of film in the cellar. Most had been shot by Braun, and the footage offered a silent and chilling look into the seemingly mundane day-to-day happenings at the retreat. Engaged in casual conversation on the terrace are high ranking staff such as Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Karl Wolff, Albert Speer, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and Reinhard Heidrich. But because the films were silent, they were largely regarded as useless for information purposes, and have languished in storage for years.

In the documentary Hitler’s Private World: Revealed, you can see some of this footage. And now thanks to a technology called ALR, you can hear it too. It is a very unsettling experience to hear Adolf Hitler “speaking” in “normal” conversation. To hear him cracking jokes, talking about films he enjoyed (such as Mickey Mouse, who knew!), and even casually flirting with his mistress Eva Braun.

ALR stands for Automated Lip Reading, and was developed by speech recognition expert Frank Hubner. In the simplest of terms, an ALR system uses a computer to motion track digitized footage, recogonize the shapes made by the lips of onscreen characters, and reconstruct the appropriate sounds to match the lip movements. It is uncannily accurate, even at extreme angles of view.

You can watch Hitler’s Private World: Revealed on Google Video. I highly recommend it.